~ Free Thinker.

Monthly Archives: February 2018

The feel-good factor of Britain’s success took little time to wear off after it emerged that each medal at the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games had cost £4.1m in funding a mere £350m for 27 golds, 23 silvers, and 38 bronzes.

The five-medal haul in Pyeongchang cost a mere 28million, £5.6 million a medal.

Using the current rates of both precious metals, the street value of a gold medal is approximately $548.

In a country with its national health services trapped for additional funds, (£8 billion a year in funding will be needed by 2020.) going through the biggest financial squeeze in its history with waiting times rising and quality of care deteriorating.

That is spending £6.2bn on two aircraft carrier that will be worthless and possibly be spending £40bn on a programme that is designed for uncertainty and indeed that an “uncertain future threat environment” may mean no threats arise and so £40bn would have been spent unnecessarily.

It would be a fair question to ask are they worth it. Is it Lottery Funds well spent.

I would say yes on the premises that money spent promoting peace far outweighs money spent on defense in a world that needs to come together to fight inequality and climate change.

There is little doubt that future A.I. will be capable of doing significant damage.

In the near future, we may indeed need a very new perspective on the nature of consciousness, as quantum mechanics is proving with a narrative of the self-interacting with the world.

Even if we manage through technology to artificially create some kind of limited consciousness it does not mean we understand it as it is an emergent property of very complex neuronal patterns.

It is easy to imagine an unconstrained software application that spreads throughout the Internet, severely mucking up our most efficient and relied upon medium for global exchange.

However, the question is will we see a machine that is aware of itself and its surroundings. That could take in and process massive amounts of data in real time?

This will require intentional behavior from an A.I. Therefore it would have a mind, as intentionality can only arise when something possesses its own beliefs, desires, and motivations.

Though computers and robots are more advanced than ever, they’re still just tools. They are unaware of their own existence and can only perform tasks for which they were programmed.

But what if they could think for themselves?

Brains and computers work very differently. Both compute, but only one understands.

A strict symbol-processing machine can never be a symbol-understanding machine

Conscious machines would raise troubling legal and ethical problems.

Would a conscious machine be a “person” under the law?

Should “conscious” be thought of in the way we think of humans, and even some animals?

IE: Information received through any of the six senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, or feeling.

Your conscious mind is continually observing and categorizing what is going on around you. It has no memory, and it can only hold one thought at a time and deal with it either positively or negatively, “yes” or “no.”

Is consciousness the accepting new information, storing and retrieving old information and cognitive processing of it all into perceptions and actions.

If that’s right, then one day machines will indeed be the ultimate consciousness.

They’ll be able to gather more information than a human, store more than many libraries, access vast databases in milliseconds and compute all of it into decisions more complex, and yet more logical, than any person ever could.

So where are we?

Is consciousness more about human behavior that cannot be computed by a machine. Creativity, for example, and the sense of freedom people possess don’t appear to come from logic or calculations.

Then again consciousness and the physical world are complementary aspects of the same reality.

When a person observes, or experiments on, some aspect of the physical world, that person’s conscious interaction causes discernible change.

Although it requires brains to become real is consciousness a thing that exists by itself – there had to be something before the Big bang perhaps space had or has a conscious.

Consciousness alone, however, cannot make physical changes to the world, but dreams or visions can. After all, we experience the world subjectively.

If a computer can’t be conscious, then how can a brain?” A simulation of a brain is still not a physical brain. After all, it is a purely physical object that works according to physical law. It even uses electrical activity to process information, just like a computer.

Some of these questions have to do with technology; others have to do with what consciousness actually is.

We left with the possibility that new biological structures that are, or could become, conscious are yet to be discovered.

The most accurate of brain simulations will not yield minds, nor will software programs produce consciousness. Therefore we will not have machines with what we call consciousness.

Human brainpower transplanted into a mechanical robot–is a quite a leap.

However, we could be confronted with this kind of technology so don’t lose your mind too soon.

All conscious human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.

Perhaps the biggest issue in the June 23 referendum was the question of whether 43 years in the EU have helped or hurt the UK economy. Of course, the referendum completely ignored that when Britain joined the EEC as it was known then as the sick man of Europe.

One can not know exactly how much the EU directly benefited Britain, but a 10 percent rise in prosperity is a reasonable estimate.

I would like some political ( descendants of the two world wars) to tell me or explain to me why now in a world that is in turmoil Britain wants to turn itself into a hermit kingdom squandering its wealth and ingenuity for an idealised notion that you are still a mighty power that the nations of the world want to trade with on your terms.

Governments and Countries can’t be run like businesses.

Societies are built on a commitment to social and economic justice, not by the free market, but by equality of opportunity.

From the outside, the whole Brexit process has highlighted your indifference to seeing that there are going to to be enormous repercussions due to a fog of denial and self-delusion.

Today one in 20 UK residents was born in another EU country.

Some Eurosceptics say Britain stands a better chance of growth if it looks beyond the sluggish economies of the EU. But this is a claim about the future, predicated on trading relationships that do not yet exist, rather than an analysis of the past.

UK trade with EU partners grew faster after 1973 than it did with the remaining countries in the European Free Trade Association, the grouping to which Britain previously belonged.

For almost half a century, Britain has benefited from greater openness to world markets, which has fostered economic dynamism. Economists have demonstrated that the main cause of that change was membership of the EU, which brought with it gains from trade, foreign direct investment, competition, and innovation.

This is what Britain is turning it back on.

The UK is one of the largest recipients of research funding in the EU. Over the period 2007 – 2013 the UK received €8.8 billion

Many Eurosceptics raged against the UK’s annual £18bn transfer to the EU.

Nigel Farage has claimed that being in the bloc costs Britain £55m a day — more than £20bn a year.

But the UK’s net transfer to the EU falls far short of such claims.

A rebate secured by Margaret Thatcher in 1984 reduced the bill and London sent £13bn to Brussels in 2015. Against that, the UK received £4.5bn from the EU in regional aid and agricultural subsidies, and the private sector received a further £1.4bn direct from the EU budget.

That takes the net cost of membership to about £7bn, less than half a percent of national income — about £260 a year for each British household.

Another often-quoted figure — the reported £33bn cost of regulation — comes from an impact assessment by Open Europe, a think-tank, of 100 EU rules.

But it is based on only one side of the balance sheet.

The benefits of the regulations are “much higher” than the costs and “clearly not all of [the costs] would disappear after Brexit”.

Most economists have little doubt that Britain’s membership of the EU has translated into more trade.

For crying out loud it’s not Isolation that Britain needs but a large dose of common sense and cooperation.

Get a grip.

It is time for young of the nation to unbottling their responsibilities to England by demanding a re-run of the Referendum without the pursuit of personal pleasure.

The UK government wants the EU to give it a transition period even if talks on the future relationship break down. This would prevent Britain from crashing out in March 2019 with no arrangements in place.

But what does transition really mean?

A change or passage from one state or stage to another. This is true for both parties.

A change of one subject to another in discourse.

A period of time during which something changes from one state or stage to another.

A change that results in a change of physical properties.

A change of public opinion or political sentiment.

A change of nature, purpose, or function of something.

The very word conjures up the word disagreement.

For this reason, alone there should be no transition period.

An implication period of the final agreement is the only route to follow.

A two-year transition will result in further destabilization unless agreed under EU terms with the final deal to be sent off to the EU Parliament for ratification.

Europe is already in a catatonic state, and only a shock on a grand scale can force the more visionary of its leaders to act to save it.

This is what is exactly what will happen if the EU agrees to a transition or implication period on completion of its negotiations re England’s departure.

Unfortunately, England has completely forgotten that it is not the European Union wanting to leave England.

However, your sacrifice for the European common good could achieve European reform – though it could also result in the disappearance of the United Kingdom itself, with the possibility of Scotland and even Northern Ireland seeking independence.

England has no idea of what it wants now nor when it entered the EU and it never will till it sheds the shadows of the Empire.

The vast majority of us now live in cities far removed from nature, walking around with our faces in smartphones connected to the cloud by algorithms sporting fancy names like Twitter, Facebook etc.

I am sure you have read or hear that we are now connected more than ever in our history, but most of this connectivity is false. As amazing as this seems, this is just the beginning of what we can expect.

Mobile technology has seen a meteoric rise in adoption since the debut of the first iPhone in 2007. Seven years have given us significant advancements in mobile technology, but relative to the span of recorded human history, seven years is still a short time.

We’re barely skimming the surface of what we can expect from technology.

This very moment we live in a world in which news is broken in under 140 characters and people are more driven by bouncing icons on their mobile phones than what can be experienced outside of their 3.5” screen.

Google attempts to understand our behaviors to deliver more relevant information and content to better connect with users through their various services.

As connected as we are now, there is still a fundamental disconnect between people and the companies that attempt to reach them through these technologies.

We may one day reach a point where true conversations can happen between man and machine, but for now, it is still up to the people, the marketers and brand ambassadors of the world, to drive this human connection.

So what does all of this mean?

The world used to be really small. People were limited to what happened in their city or village and every now and then, if the event was truly important, the news spread far enough. They wrote letters that would take months to reach their final destination if ever at all. The information was kept by few. You would hear from countries directly involved in the recent history of yours and you would barely ever make it very far from home. And even if you did, it was not an everyday thing or an everyday decision for anyone.

This was the life less than 100 years ago.

And to put things in perspective, humans have been on earth for around 200.000 years and the Earth herself is 4.543 billion years old.

So we can agree that the way we live now is fairly recent.

“We are now so disconnected” with the madness being amplified year after year with so much information it leaves us with 3 choices:

You will listen to it as if this had nothing to do with you what so ever.

Or

You hide under your blankets. Forever. And deny it. Live in the bubble. Proclaim that all is well. Refuse to see the disconnection to the point that you are unable to move or function.

Or

We can take a stand, and make a choice.

We can listen enough to know and make an informed choice and then we can choose to do something about it.

This is where the greatness is found.

There are no absolutes in science but we have to begin to trust the science of climate change.

Why?

Because it is untestable that this is the best planet we know, and it is clear beyond any doubt that the risk to us all is climate change.

The move beyond the land and our disconnection from nature are impressive… but it is also one of the main threats facing us all.

With or without the Paris climate agreements: We are still pumping 70 million tons of CO2 into our atmosphere a day.

Rest assure that climate change will not all happen at once.

It must now be treated as a continual threat with no debate.

We exist by nature consent not the other way around and the sooner we learn it the better.

It is the time that we put sustainability on all Education syllabus.

It is the time for all of us to demand that all-weather forecasting slots on our televisions screens at least once every three months addressed climate change.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.

Name(required)

Email(required)

Website

Comment(required)

YET we are more connected today than ever before and this has its madness and its greatness.

In a few weeks, your unelected Mrs. T May and her Tory party will be negotiating your future away.

There will be no compensates for a Brexit. It will make it harder to go to university, harder to get a job, harder to start a family and harder to buy a house?

SURELY THERE MUST BE A YOUNG VOICE WITH OR WITHOUT £50,000 OF UNIVERSITY FEES DEBT HANGING AROUND THE NECK THAT CAN MAKE ITSELF HEARD IN THE POLITICAL WILDERNESS OF BRIXIT.

The generational chasm that is being created by Brexit will come to define your modern democracy. A total negation of the will of young people.

An act of self-mutilation with almost mythical status marching down the isolationist path in a world that is in the grip of the 4th revolution called technology.

We all know that the EU needs reform. To be sure, stopping Brexit can’t be an end in itself.

In a world that is supposed to be more connected than ever before this reform will happen due to social media not by reactionary ideology.

As Mrs. May is trapped by the economics of self-service it is time to become vociferous and push Jeremy Corbyn off the fence on Brexit:

The Nigel Paul Farage of this world was summed up in a radio interview by a listener comment. ” You have spent more than 20 years of your life in Belgium, and for all that you do not speak a word of Flemish, German or French.”

It appears that Theresa May has little or no understanding of the mean of the word Union or for that matter Nato Motto, “animus in consulendo liber”

(A satisfactory translation of the phrase has not been found, although a French version“l’esprit libre dans la consultation” comes close. Renderings in English have ranged from the cryptic “in discussion a free mind” to the more complex “man’s mind ranges unrestrained in counsel.”)

It is complete hogwash to be saying England wants to leave the EU’s common foreign and security policy as early as next year but would show flexibility around the UK’s red lines to secure a new security treaty. Dropping out of the single market and refusing to adhere to judgments of the European court of justice (ECJ) means the country would no longer be able to participate in joint institutions such as Europol, EU police databases or EU military missions.

So would someone please explain to me what she means when she says ” participated in EU agencies while also having its “sovereign legal order.”

If you are no longer in Europol and you have ditched the EU’s common foreign and security policy how can you “respect the role of the European court of justice”

On the other hand it seems to me that all the talk about a European Army/Security and its joint headquarters is another attempt to set up a new bureaucratic structure in order that European officials can continue to exist in comfort, producing paperwork and public declarations, just as they do in the EU and the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly (PACE).

Many Europeans have argued that the members of the European Union can exert greater influence in the world if they act together rather than separately; and that following the decline of Europe’s major powers, individual states’ power can collectively create a more powerful and credible European voice on the world stage.

The EU rarely manages to speak with one voice in any meaningful way.

There may well be a massive chasm between Europe, England, and US in terms of military capability but the fight against militants needs not more troops, but extensive and professional law enforcement agencies, a wide network of agents and other anti-terrorist structures.

They cannot be an army with rockets, tanks, bombers, and fighters – you do not fight against terrorists with heavy military equipment.

Having a joint court to arbitrate between states is a pragmatic solution to security cooperation.

One way or the other, Europe cannot afford two parallel armies for several reasons. Firstly, even now, a number of states are in no hurry to allocate 2 percent of their GDP to NATO’s overall defense budget, which relies mainly on Washington paying 75 percent of the total. Also, there are not enough human resources for the new army.

Furthermore, in an army, which is based on a unity of command and unquestioning obedience to the commander or boss, there cannot be any independent structures in principle. Otherwise, it is not an army, but a bad collective farm of bewildered soldiers receiving orders in twenty different languages.

So would someone tell me on what principle an integrated European army should be created?

In 2000, the EU announced proposals for an army of 100,000 (60,000 of whom could be deployed at 60 days’ notice for up to a year at a time). Britain’s Conservative Party commented at the time that this would effectively destroy NATO. Either troops already committed to NATO will be counted twice, or, in the worst case scenario, troops will be withdrawn from existing NATO missions.

But if a European army is created all the same, how will Russia react?

The Russians will work with it as they do with NATO. Let us just hope that the relationship will start with a clean slate and become a friendly one.

Sovereignty, however, cannot be traded for influence.

The ability to project power, whether regionally or globally, depends on several factors, including leadership, credibility, military capability, popular support, and dependable allies. The EU lacks all of these qualities.

The EU has no standing army. Instead, under its common security and defense policy (CSDP), it relies on ad hoc forces contributed by EU countries for:

Since the Maastricht Treaty of 1991, the European Union has sought to forge a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) precisely to take the lead in times of global crises. Since January 2007, the EU has been able to carry out rapid-response operations with 2 concurrent single-battle groups, each comprising 1500 soldiers.

The EU failed to comprehend the sheer complexity of the problems of an EU Army because of its own institutional and military limitations, and the very different historical perspectives and poli­cies of its 12 constituent members.

For example, Austria, Ireland, Finland, Sweden, and Malta have chosen to pursue neutrality. It is highly improbable that these countries which don’t even belong to NATO will enroll their citizens in a European military alliance.

Article 42 of the Lisbon Treaty clear STATES that any further co-operation in the area of defense should be consistent with Nato commitments.

Even though terrorism is a serious issue, centralizing security and defense policies on the European level isn’t a useful way of fighting such a diffused and complex threat. If a Foreign policy is an attribute of statehood that must remain at the nation-state level if it is to be meaningful or effective.

Is it not pathetic to witness Mrs. May linking an economic deal to crime-fighting measures and to the sharing of intelligence.

It’s like a naughty school child sharing a secret for a smartie.

Without group security goals, building a common defense policy is neither realistic nor useful.

Like this:

The idea that globalization has become unmoored from geography – and Britain is about to reap the rewards – is wishful thinking.

All evidence points to the opposite conclusion:

In fact, Britain is not about to enter a “post-geography trading world”.

Brexit will damage the UK’s flagship services sector, rather than liberating it.

In this day and age of technology services are increasingly delivered electronically, with financial transactions, advertisement mock-ups, and architectural blueprints sent to clients over the internet.

While this is true trade between two countries is greater if they have larger economies, and less if they are more distant from one another.

It is inconceivable that to this day it is not understood by the British people that the EU is the UK’s natural trading partner; that the single market has done more to raise trade in services than free trade agreements (FTAs); and that any barriers thrown up as a consequence of Brexit will be hard to offset with lower barriers to trade with the rest of the world.

The EU is a rich, large market that is on the UK’s doorstep, and its single market has proved more effective at reducing barriers to services trade than bilateral free trade agreements. The EU’s rules have led to an estimated 60 percent boost to services trade between EU member-states.

When it comes to goods and agriculture, the idea that trade is detached from geography is flat wrong.

Products and services are increasingly bundled together as one, services find themselves bound to the physical geography of manufactured goods.

While technology has certainly made interactions at a distance easier, these interactions still often require both parties to be in the same place:

Services are largely delivered by people and nearly half of the UK’s exports are now in services.

While it attempts to negotiate a new relationship with the EU, the outcome of which is highly uncertain, all of this undermines the government’s ‘global Britain’ narrative.

Britain is becoming a semi-detached member of the EU, outside the euro and the Schengen zone, and increasingly eurosceptic.

One does not need a crystal ball to see that the EU needs reforms, but there can be no half-way house between a free trade agreement and full membership of the single market. Nor can there be ‘Managed divergence’.

IE: The UK and EU commit to regulatory alignment in some sector while allowing the UK to diverge from new rules in others in the future.

This amounts to cherry-picking, which the EU has made a red line.

The EU-27 cannot agree to a system where the UK converges when deemed to be in its interest, but diverges in those sectors in which it could gain competitive advantage with the rest of the world.

It would be a political feat for the EU and UK to agree which rules are crucial for maintaining a level playing field, and which matter less. Certain rules matter for the operation of several different markets (chemical regulations have an impact on other markets for products that use those chemicals, as well as on the environment), and some are highly specific to a particular market.

Since the economic impact of regulations is very hard to identify objectively, any disputes could prove impossible to manage.

If the UK chose to diverge from one part of the EU’s insurance regime, should the EU have the right to curtail market access in the sector as a whole?

There is no getting away from that a free trade agreement would lead to more checks and paperwork on UK imports at the EU’s border – especially in highly regulated sectors like agriculture, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and cars, which would no longer be subject to the EU’s rules.

It is also not possible to do services-only trade deals.

So what’s left on the table is a fudge-

or- What’s in it for me?

One way or the other finding a solution is entirely dependent on EU goodwill with or without a transition period the time is ripe for EU reform.

The EU’s institutions, the European Commission is losing the trust of some governments because of the perception that it is increasingly dependent on the European Parliament.

It should return to an equidistant position between the Council of Ministers and the Parliament.

National parliaments should play a greater role in EU governance.

It is time to transcend the traditional battle between communautaire and inter-governmental thinking.

The EU cannot succeed without both federal institutions and a major role for governments; they must work together.

As long as the European Union is made up of independent nations with their own elected governments, their problems are going to be essentially local and they will need local solutions. Squeezing them into the same monetary straightjacket has clearly failed and adding a fiscal union would just exacerbate an already unsustainable situation. Governments need the flexibility to deal with their own problems.

History tells us citizens will not accept taxation without representation.

Fiscal union would, therefore, would not be a major step towards a true political union. Fiscal union would entail a ballooning of the EU budget – provoking endless bickering among the 27 (or more) member states on how to share it out, not to mention the expanded scope for graft and bureaucratic inefficiency.

Do you ever stop to ask yourself why you should trust the information or decisions that algorithms produce?

AI smartphones will soon be standard, using machine learning from the cloud and sooner than later smartphones will have personalized algorithms that will run even when offline.

These algorithms will be own by the companies that both sell and manufacture the phone and will, therefore, carry inbuilt biases depending on which platforms they are attached to.

Imagine a cheap little device that can compute as much data as all the brains in the world. It will have a deep and irreversible affect on everyone and there is no way of predicting what exactly will happen as the developers of such a device will have no idea what it is doing.

How far do we want to go- Robots that obey no matter what with us blind human as their allies.

Today the world faces a number of hugely complex challenges, from global warming to conflicts to nuclear weapons to rampant inequality. But one the real seismic change is how we are going to respond to each other when we all trusting algorithms to make decisions on our behalf.

Now is it the time to put in place world standards and regulations that govern the use of all biological data.

THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT THE WORLD IS GOING TO NEEDS AS MUCH COMPUTER POWER POSSIBLE TO TACKLE ITS PENDING PROBLEMS.

HOWEVER, IT SHOULD BE A HUMAN RIGHT TO INSPECT THE SOURCE CODES OF ANY TECHNOLOGY THAT HAS BIOLOGICAL DATA IN ITS TARGETED SOFTWARE ALGORITHMS.

IT IS OBVIOUS THAT THE COST OF POWER/ENERGY WILL DRIVE THE USE OF TECHNOLOGY AND ITS SYSTEMS IN THE WORKPLACE AND COMMERCIAL WORLD MARKETS NOT TO MENTION SURVEILLANCE EITHER BY GOVERNMENTS OR OTHER ORGANISATIONS.